Iza Tarasewicz

The large-scale installations of Polish artist Iza Tarasewicz take shape as modular structures – mobile and reconfigurable systems based on formal principles inspired by nature, scientific research and visual aids such as graphs and diagrams. Many of her works consist of diverse units that can be continuously rearranged and transformed depending on the exhibition context. The artist draws on the atomistic philosophy of classical antiquity as well as on 20th-century explanatory models – quantum physics and chaos theory – in connection with in-depth studies of labour, folk traditions and modernism. Her sculptures and assemblages, in which she works with materials ranging from rusted steel to Lingzhi mushrooms, form dynamic systems in which the boundary between organic and inorganic blurs. Tarasewicz’s art is deeply rooted in the social and (agricultural) economic practices that have left lasting traces both in the Podlachia region where she was born and in the rites and folk traditions that shape the culture of large parts of Central and Eastern Europe.

At the heart of Tarasewicz’s work is the idea that, contrary to the deceptive notion that we could detach ourselves from our environment, our lives are inextricably interwoven with those of other species that accompany us. In view of growing social inequalities and the hyperindividualism of capitalist societies, as well as the populist and fascist political movements they nourish, her practice is guided by the question of how we can form bonds and create kinship. In her eclectic exhibition at the Secession, Tarasewicz brings sci-fi concepts together with agriculture, combining spacecraft and retro machines that have become useless in today's economy and are regarded as technological scrap. By letting these machines build their own chaotic community, she creates playful and humorous model examples of another reality, in order to confront a constantly accelerating world in which economic and political orders around the globe are in a serious crisis. Her installation reflects chaos not only as a destructive force but also explores its productive potential, an openness that can lead to new insights and revive forms of communal life.